Interviews

HealthFore

Pankaj Vaish

HealthFore has grown to be one of the few healthcare companies in the SEA market that provide end to end healthcare IT solutions. Over the past two years, our product line has expanded to include innovate solutions in mHealth / tele-health space. This can revolutionize the way healthcare is delivered in India. Patients can be empowered to make more informed decision for their health issues. Video consultation using mobile phones, data collection and analysis, reminders and alerts, lab and radiology results in real time on mobile, treatment modifications etc. are some of the areas where mHealth will be very useful in future.

Pankaj Vaish
           Pankaj Vaish President

1. Health is a buzzword today, Healthcare being a unique sector with varied demands and needs! What is your perception in this regard?

One frequently hears healthcare and education being mentioned as two industry segments which are on the threshold of a great technology revolution. And I believe this is not far from the truth. Health care is an information-intensive industry. Its cornerstone has been a research tradition of hundreds of years – in the field of medicine, advanced lab testing methods, treatment approaches and medical equipment. As compared to other industries, say banking, or travel, where broadly speaking, products and services can be made accessible to the masses in an identical repeatable manner, healthcare needs for each patient being treated are very individualistic. It includes trend data to allow analysis of each case being diagnosed and treated. When caring for a patient, special knowledge of their past and knowhow is often needed, and this compels the industry into a networked mode of operation, with a lot of communication and expert proficiency needs.

Healthcare is also a far more complex ecosystem than some of the other industry segments which have embraced ICT as part of their day to day operations. In healthcare – medical professionals, health workers, care providers, health insurance providers or payers, government regulators and policy makers’ diagnostic centers, pharmaceuticals and chemists, etc. have to all work in tandem to ensure patient-centric care continuum is available in a cost effective manner. The market is changing and governments and health management organizations are placing greater emphasis, and greater resources, on technology as an enabler to not only bridge the healthcare gap but also improve outcomes and making healthcare affordable and accessible.

With this background, it is astonishing to see how slowly the industry has adopted ICT, especially in the developing and underdeveloped part of the world where the healthcare divide is even bigger. It is only in the last decade or so that healthcare industry as a whole has come together to support/ adopt IT, ICT and mobile/ telephony technologies in offering integrated care solutions. Healthcare is still in the early stages of technological evolution.

Very exciting times ahead for companies who are focused on providing Healthcare IT products, solutions and services.

2. HealthFore and Religare enterprises has been in the Healthcare domain for over 50 years, Would you like to share some insights on the company’s growth and expansion in this sector?

Religare is synonymous with Healthcare. The promoter group aggressively pursues interests in the healthcare space through Fortis Healthcare, Super Religare Laboratories, Religare Health Insurance, Religare Technologies, Religare Wellness and Religare Healthcare Private Equity Fund. Fortis Healthcare, which opened its first hospital in 2001, is the second largest Private Hospital Network in India with a total Installed and Projected capacity of over 12,000 beds across 75 multi-specialty hospitals, globally. This is cohesively supported by Super Religare Labs which has over 1,650 Collection Centers in 550+ cities in India.

All these entities, even though belong to the same promoter group, operate independently with minimal interference.

HealthFore is focused on Healthcare IT with the core purpose of being a provider of choice in delivering integrated healthcare solutions using innovative IT products and platforms. We offer integrated Hospital Information Management Systems and transformational B2B and B2C solutions to both healthcare providers and end consumers; solutions built on leading edge technology and backed by significant domain expertise.

HealthFore has seen extensive growth in India, Middle Eastern and African markets and is now beginning to expand in Asia Pacific region.

Our presence in these regions is an evidence of our product and delivery capabilities.

3. What do you think is important in Healthcare Sector while designing a software or providing an integrated solution for the customers?

Healthcare needs are unique for every region; they can differ enormously from country to country, rural to urban, private to public and enterprise to consumers. Basically, one size does not fit all. The way you approach the design and solution are primarily driven by four key factors; namely – affordability, accessibility, awareness and return on investment of the software. Striking the right balance amongst these factors, keeping in mind always, that in the end you should be able to monetize it over a given time period is most important. Also important is that the software can be easily modified and adopted to the changing needs of the marketplace without having to invest a lot of effort.

HealthFore’s endeavor is to ensure that the integrated platforms and solutions that we design, build and deploy are aligned to the needs of the target segment keeping the above factors in mind. The essentials that we have to ensure are – deep domain understanding of the problem and requirements, continuity of the core team for the entire product/ software lifecycle from concept to launch to post implementation support and adequate budgets to ensure that one does not have to resort to shortcuts while building the solution. On the software engineering side of things, choice of right technology, managing the increasing cost of quality and development complexity while balancing quality and speed is extremely important for any software project.

4. Recently HealthFore launched Mediphone! What were the areas focused while designing Mediphone?

Health Helplines or “Call a Doctor” as it is usually referred to are not a new concept in India. Several providers have tried it in various forms over the past couple of years but have not been able to really sustain it for one or more reasons. We partnered with Airtel, the largest cellular telecom operator in the country with a mobile subscriber base of over 180 million subscribers to conceptual MediPhone. Mediphone was launched after an exhaustive evaluation and analysis of several focused pilots that we undertook for over an 8 months period – March to October 2011. These pilots helped us collate a lot of data and the analytics were quite encouraging. It helped us identify the right target segments and the need pattern of the consumers that we need to address. Some of the factors considered for Mediphone launch were:

  • Need for a Tele-Triage service in India with Pan India coverage which is affordable, accessible and available in the remotest of geographies
  • Higher adoption in urban areas than rural areas
  • Need for a dietary and counseling services along with triage helpline
  • Higher percentage of male callers than female
  • Majority of calls for acute and minor ailments

This was backed up with an execution approach that was operationally sound and scalable to offer 24×7 services in various languages. This clearly established Mediphone as an alternative when in need of a consultation with the physician, sitting in comfort of home/office and ensuring confidentiality of information shared.

5. What is the overall market size of your Mediphone business in India? What is the growth rate that you are expecting?

It depends how you view it. There can be various ways in which the overall market size of a service like Mediphone can be projected. Without getting into complex modeling, if one just looks at the fact that there are on an average 1 doctor for 1000 people in the country and that 80% of the doctors practice in urban areas, there is a huge gap which a service like MediPhone can offer. We believe, the current overall market size for Mediphone in India is approximately Rs. 50 Cr and this is expected to grow to Rs. 450 Cr by 2016 with a CAGR of over 70%. Some of this demand will also get fulfilled by state funded health helpline initiatives.

6. Which are your most successful implementations in Healthcare sector globally so far? Would you like to share some of the inputs in terms of testimonials/ feedback received from your customers?

HealthFore has successfully implemented its flagship HIS product Magnum across 12 countries in over 20 hospitals. It also services millions of customers through its tele-traige offering MediPhone and other solutions in tele-medicine for chronic disease management and remote patient monitoring.

Customer testimonials can be found on our website at www.religaretech.com.

7. In your opinion, the solutions provided by you including Hospital/ Labs information systems, practice management software, Enterprise solutions, mHealth etc. can change the way healthcare is being delivered today?

The traditional brick and mortar healthcare delivery system is never going to be able to meet the health needs of any nation. Healthfore’s whole purpose of existence is to be able to use technology in a manner that can help provide innovative and transformational healthcare solutions and services in our chosen market segments. Our solutions will change the way healthcare is being delivered today because they integrate with the traditional care delivery methods and extend them to offer virtual and remote care wherever the patients needs it. We believe that the best solutions come from collaborative relationships with our clients. Our solutions are designed keeping in mind their strategic goals.

8. Can you give a brief limelight on the various products & solutions provided by HealthFore to its clients?

HealthFore has two broad businesses. The Products business that caters to hospitals and healthcare providers with an integrated HIMS and PACS suite of products and the mHealth business.

Magnum HIS is a comprehensive Hospital Information System (HIS) for managing the workflow processes across the healthcare enterprise. It covers entire hospital workflows from patient registration to creation of balance sheet. Magnum PACS is a complete Web based, enterprise class, Picture Archival & Communication System, offering a comprehensive and fully integrated solution for digital imaging. Magnum Kiosk enables self-service experience for patients to manage their contact details or view their outstanding invoices using touch screen technology. Magnum Portal is a web based portal that allows the patient to interact and communicate with their Healthcare providers, namely physicians and hospitals.

The mHealth business provides health and wellness solutions, to companies & consumers, using innovative combination of IT and telecommunications, with traditional medical care; these solutions are offered over telephony & internet channels maximizing their availability and affordability. We launched a free health concierge & referral service, Healthline24X7, more than a year back, which provides callers with all possible information on diseases, drugs, treatments, and allows callers to find the most appropriate healthcare provider based on their specific needs.

Our Mediphone service, launched in partnership with Airtel, provides 24X7 medical advice to Airtel mobile subscribers, giving them the ability to consult a doctor on demand, over the phone from anywhere, at any time.

With the white-labeled Medi-Consult platform, we are working with corporates and health providers, extending the on demand “doctor on call” service to their users and patients. With Medi-Consult, our partner in the Insurance space is able to provide unique and round the clock medical offerings to its policy holders. The CDM solutions are working for health providers to help their patients better manage chronic and lifestyle ailments.

9. Tell us something about your future endeavors, and new applications HealthFore is coming up with?

HealthFore has grown to be one of the few healthcare companies in the SEA market that provide end to end healthcare IT solutions. Over the past two years, our product line has expanded to include innovate solutions in mHealth / tele-health space. This can revolutionize the way healthcare is delivered in India. Patients can be empowered to make more informed decision for their health issues. Video consultation using mobile phones, data collection and analysis, reminders and alerts, lab and radiology results in real time on mobile, treatment modifications etc. are some of the areas where mHealth will be very useful in future.

We also think that cloud will be the future for connected healthcare communities. We are working on various cloud enabled solutions bring the benefits of SaaS to healthcare providers. Cloud-based model would free them from having to provide operational support, maintenance, patching, upgrades and regulatory changes and focus on their core expertise i.e. providing quality care.

10. Asian Hospitals and Healthcare Management’ a leading Healthcare title in print and digital versions reaches directly to key industry professionals & the decision makers in the Healthcare industry. The magazine addresses the most significant developments, trends and features opinions and analyses by respected leaders from the Hospitals & Healthcare industry. What do you think about our magazine who is into promoting & branding healthcare industry today on such a wide scale?

I have read several interesting articles in your magazine and follow AHHM to garner information in the Asia Pacific healthcare market. The healthcare communities’ key executives receive key insights and recommendations to raise awareness of the emerging trends, business needs and technologies that will drive innovation within the healthcare realm. AHHM also combines the knowledge and insight from subject matter experts across all corners of healthcare community.